A Fresh Start for China

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with President Barack Obama in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, January 26, 2009. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

by Orville Schell

Originally published in Time, February 12, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is headed to China. The inclusion
of Beijing on her first trip overseas suggests that she and the new
U.S. President intend to make the People's Republic of China a keystone
in the arch of America's foreign relations. Paradoxically, Clinton will
be aided by the fact that President Barack Obama has never been to
Beijing, has previously said relatively little about China and is thus
viewed there as something of a blank slate. Although that has caused
anxiety among Chinese officials, it may also be a virtue.

Somehow, the "China question" managed to slumber largely undisturbed
throughout the presidential election—which was probably just as well.
It meant that Obama and Clinton could start thinking about China anew,
without being encumbered by too many pre-existing political commitments.

Alas, it was into this unfilled void that the then unenthroned U.S.
Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, stumbled. In a written
response to Senate questions, he suggested that China had been
manipulating its currency. (Some in the U.S. have long alleged that by
supposedly keeping its currency undervalued against the dollar, China
gives its exporters an unfair advantage in American markets.) Since
Geithner's was the new Administration's first real comment on relations
with Beijing, Chinese leaders reacted as if a hostile shot had been
fired across their bow. But Obama then called China's President Hu
Jintao, evidently assuring him that the statement did not represent the
spirit of future U.S. policy, and the incident passed.

China's reaction to Geithner, however, gave a hint of the importance
that Beijing attaches to relations with the U.S. and of how jumpy
officials are about them. So before something else intrudes, now is the
time to ponder what the foundation of a comprehensive new architecture
for Sino-U.S. relations might look like.

The reality is that the two countries have morphed into a state of
co-dependence that makes separation virtually impossible. Because the
Chinese are dependent on American consumers to buy their goods (the
U.S. had a $246 billion trade deficit with China as of November 2008)
and because the U.S. is dependent on China to fund its $10.7 trillion
debt, economics bind us indissolubly together. But we are also
connected in one other way. Both the U.S. and China are rich in coal as
an energy source and collectively produce upwards of 50% of the world's
annual emission of greenhouse gases. Unless the two nations can find a
way to collaborate in confronting the challenge of climate change,
there can be no global solution to it. Why? Because a molecule of
carbon dioxide emitted in Beijing or New York is now everyone's problem
and will help derange climate patterns for all.

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